Tuesday, 22 June 1949. George and Barrie arrived in this morning from the district of the Pimpernel mine without a single speci- men, after a rather uncomfortable night. They had forgotten to take their tea and sugar, which didn't matter, as it turned out, as there was no water. For- tunately they were only out the one night. During the previous evening Van and I had prepared our gear for our visit to the Airport and started off as soon as Barrie had been restored with hot tea and a good breakfast. The Airport lies approximately seven miles south by west from our head- quarters and originally was used by the R.A.A.F. and U.S.A.F. during the war. It consists of three strips, each over a mile long, but only two of them were completed. It is hewn out from a mixture of scrub and open forest and at one time several hundreds of men were sheltered in the huts which still stand in spite of the ravages of white ants. The frames do, anyway. But instead of the hundreds of men, there now is one, Leo Ferris, an elderly man, veteran of both world wars, whose only contact with the world is on Wednesdays and Thurs- days, when the Thursday Island plane goes by. His nearest neighbors normally are the three people who live at our camp, two of whom are away, the workers on the road, about five miles away who are going out at the end of the month anyway, and then the Fishers at Portland Roads, twenty-two miles away and the miners at Wenlock, forty miles away perhaps. Leo turned out to be a very gracious host and started us by walking us a mile to a ford of the Claudie where was a crocodile hole, minus occupant. Van set some traps around the stream, while Leo and I crossed the ford and rummaged around in the scrub on the other side. Bugs and crawling things were prolific and plentiful and I made a good collection within a few hours. We returned a- cross the river, were joined by Can and returned to Leo's house where he has a kerosene operated refrigerator but says his stomach will not permit him to take cold things or ice water. In the afternoon Van finished his trap-line and I re- pared the things I had taken during the morning, and we later wandered around the strip, examining the bits of scrub on its edges; I noticed a number of old, crashed army planes. The evening, from about 8 to 10, Van and I went out with lights but got no results at all except a few tree lizards, checkoes. The occupants of the croc pool were still absent or deeply submerged and the only thing we could see in the fairly still and rather murky waters of the Claudie were the eyes of some kind of fish. They shone a ruby-red in the light of our headlights and moved eerily along under the water. With all modesty, Leo seemed delighted to have some company and has been talking almost incessantly since we arrived. It would not matter who was with him, of course, and so many of these men who lead solitary lives, have just enough society to make them kiss it and want more - they have not quite reached the state of complete bushness, when silence has become so ingrained that they cannot talk to visitors. It seems that I can compare many of these men with varuous movie people, about the best way to describe them to others. Pop-eye the Sailor would be a caricature of Jetty Joe; Leo reminds me of James Gleason, though I don't know which would be the caricature. The plane is due about 4 P.M. this afternoon and I have to collect our mail and return to headquarters in order to get our out-going stuff ready; Van will stay another night and return to camp on Thursday. Then we have to pack specimens ready for shipment to Cairns at the end of the week.